We played Settlers to death back in college. The old brown box/photo graphics 1st and 2nd Editions (2nd came with white, black, orange and purple pieces to expand from 5-8 and rules for 5-6 and 7-8 player layouts). We also eventually had Seafarers. Frankly, I thought Seafarers added nothing of any real value (and it had the ugly, ugly graphics that I think they're still using a variant of). We'd all graduated by the time Cities and Knights came out and the post-college gaming group I was in was as sick of Settlers as I was so we never played it. The game I played a couple weeks ago was with college friends in a fit of nostalgia. The fact that I won easily was mostly due to tilted dice, a magically coming-together longest road and a very timely library card draw. Not bad opponents, just a tilted game.
The base game is, well, it's OK. I respect its place in Euro history and admire the fact that many gamers enjoy it and non-gamers usually can learn it and enjoy it, too. The main problem I have is that if you're playing with "max players," i.e. 4,6 or 8 depending on the layout, at least one (typically two in the case of 8-player) player will have virtually no chance of winning within a few turns due to being cut off. And once you get the rhythms of what's valuable when, it's largely luck, hard to be too clever in the deal-making when what everyone's doing is really pretty transparent if you're paying attention. The first few turns' rolls become paramount... <shrug> Crap was too strong, but I'm well over it. Nostalgia will probably srike in another five years.
S